The three princes of the county are signed up for three more years and, in Ryan's case, two more after that.

Ryan got his five-year, $25.5 million deal on Tuesday, four days before Day 1 of Ducks training camp, and it's easy to identify the wallets that will be financing team get-togethers on the road.

This season Getzlaf gets $5.125 million, Perry $5.375 and Ryan $3.25.

The year after, Perry makes the same, Getzlaf goes to $5.75M and Ryan jumps to $5.56, where he stays through the '14-'15 season.

Perry dips to $4.875 in '13, and Getlzaf rises to $6.125. Then they are theoretically free (we'll get back to that).

Ryan blithely admitted that it was his strategy to tie his deal to theirs. That is why he wanted only three years, and that is why July and August rolled by without a commitment.

"It was a long process considering it was supposed to happen on July 1," said Ryan, who, bless him, remains compulsively blunt. "I'd hitched my wagon to those two guys for a long time."

Eventually, he said, Getzlaf and Perry said they wanted to remain Ducks beyond their contract and presumably until the Pacific Ocean is either paved over or engulfs Lido Island.

That was good enough for Ryan, who was rumored to be eyeing Philadelphia – "a lot of armchair GMs," he scoffed – but associates his best times with Southern California.

At its peak in '11-'12, the Dotted Line will cost the Ducks $16.687 million. But Perry and Getzlaf don't turn 26 until next May and Ryan will only be 24 on St. Patrick's Day. That means all three of them will be 29 when they hit the market.

The Ducks also have goalie Jonas Hiller and defensemen Lubomir Visnovsky and Toni Lydman locked up for three more seasons.

"We're back to having some stability," said general manager Bob Murray. "It has been a while. I think we're pretty much where we want to be."

On the surface, everybody in hockey should be saying that. The NHL has ridden a comet the past two years, with Chicago and Boston becoming thriving markets again, with Los Angeles on the way, with Canadian fans seemingly quadrupling their mania every year, and with an Olympic final that was a one-day training film on why hockey leaped to earth off the icy eyebrows of God.

But with two years left on this collective bargaining agreement, some owners are livid about salary cap circumvention and the high cost of players of Ryan's age. With restricted free agency, salary arbitration and regular free agency, there is deep sentiment toward a payroll slowdown.

The new union chief is an old name: Don Fehr, who led the baseball players through the 1994 lockout but subsequently signed two agreements without a work stoppage. Fehr violently resisted a salary cap in baseball, but hockey already has one and he has drawn, or at least voiced, no conclusions about it.

The owners locked out the players for the entire '04-'05 season and declared victory. There is little reason to believe they will be more reticent this time.

So file that away when you start calculating the effect of long hockey contracts.

Ryan has scored 66 goals the past two years and is a combined plus-22. He averaged 18½ minutes last year and said he is not coming to camp to lose weight this time, as in the past.

He also recognized the "overwhelming sense of calm" that the retired Scott Niedermayer brought to the chamber, and says he'll have to find ways to lead.

"We'll be competitive," he said. "We'll be underdogs. I think that's a good place for us."

Certainly the Ducks can match nuclei with most teams, but often you make or miss the playoffs because of your third line and your third defensive pair. That's where the questions live.

Joffrey Lupul's disk problems have morphed into a blood infection, and there is no telling when or if he will play this year.

At least one rookie, Luca Sbisa, will be on defense, and first-round pick Cam Fowler will be given a shot. If Fowler can hold up physically – and hold up forwards from turning the corner – he might be difficult to send back to junior hockey in Windsor, particularly since he has conquered all worlds there.

Upstairs, the Ducks arrive with little box-office momentum. No playoffs last year, no economic recovery this year. No Niedermayer, either.

But there is Teemu Selanne, as always, and there is the best young line in all of hockey, a Dotted Line with a lot of chapters to write. And no deadline.

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